


discovery

by Mistflyer1102



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Domestic Fluff, Gen, Tinkering
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-17
Updated: 2020-10-17
Packaged: 2021-03-09 02:13:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 781
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27066934
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mistflyer1102/pseuds/Mistflyer1102
Summary: Six-year old Rose Tico discovers something unexpected when tinkering.
Kudos: 1





	discovery

_I’ve got this, I’ve got this, I’ve got this…_

Rose Tico leaned forward and pressed the last few commands into the device’s central console, biting her lip as she watched the monitor flicker. It spluttered, and then died… again. Frowning, she turned it over in her hands, studying the dented ports as best as she could in the afternoon sunlight of Hays Minor. Paige had said to leave it when the two girls saw it on their walk home from school, but Rose was curious to see if she could get it up and running again…whatever it was supposed to do. That would be the first order of business once it was up and running, figuring what it did. 

“Rose, are you gonna mess with that, or can I have your turn in the simulator?”

Rose looked up to see Paige standing in the garage door, hands on her hips. “Yeah, sure, go ahead,” she said, going back to the device in her hands. “You’re the better pilot anyway,” she muttered under her breath as she heard Paige running off towards where their grandmother kept the Z-95 Headhunter simulator.

She continued to turn the device over in her hands, trying to pick out the bits of dirt and grit that still remained embedded on the device from being buried for so long on the side of the road. _I’ll have to clean it first, and then try taking it apart to fix it._ Biting the tip of her tongue, she carefully set it on the nearest stool, and then climbed onto another stool to reach her father’s worktable. Then she climbed onto the table, studying the numerous tools that lined the pegs and hooks on the board in front of her. She found the bristly brushes on the end, and then bit her lip before selecting the second smallest brush and pulled it off the hook.

She picked up the device, and then began to carefully scrub at the edges of the device. It looked like a box with wires sticking out of one end, and a small metal pole sticking out perpendicular to the main box, and she could faintly see serial numbers etched into one of the sides. With her hand tucked into what looked like a broken handle, the device faintly reminded her of the handheld drills her father carried with him as part of the mining kit he carried and kept locked away when he was not using it. 

Rose shifted into a cross-legged position, absently humming to herself as she scrubbed at the dirt caked onto the sides. She could see what she guessed would be the drill’s battery case: the case was empty, but she could see the markings and insert slots. She knew to be careful anyway, her father always sat her and Paige down to go over every new tool he had in his kit. _“You need to be careful when you see something like this, because dads make mistakes too and leave things lying around, and I don’t want you to get hurt because of my mistake,”_ he’d told her when she’d asked once. 

Rose paused when she heard a rattle, and felt something wiggle under the bristles. 

She lifted the brush, and then blinked when she saw that a piece that looked like a cap was loose. She tilted her head, and then poked it with the tip of the brush handle. 

_Plink!_

Rose jumped when the cap snapped off, and leaned forward in time to see the cap bounce across the garage and underneath her mother’s speeder. Then she turned to look back at the device when something shiny caught her eye.

She found silver fluid slowly pooling at the edge of the work table. Curious, Rose tilted her head to follow the silver trail back to the device—where it missed her fingers by centimeters—to find a hole where the cap used to be. She held her breath as she studied the hole, squinting at the spot of darkness that was still dripping the silver fluid. Spots of hardened silver lined the edges, and she wondered if it had already been leaking before she got it. 

Careful not to let it touch her fingers, she set the device down, and then scooted to the edge of the table. She slid onto the stool, and then onto the floor. “Dad? Dad!” she shouted as she ran from the garage. She still remembered his other rule about using the workbench, aside from not picking up tools she couldn’t reach while sitting on the workbench.

If she didn’t know what something was, she asked an adult first before touching it.

**Author's Note:**

> Star Wars and all related media belong to Disney.


End file.
